Pages

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Smoking Jaguar

Today was a mental marathon at the coffee shop. While I had intended to deal with digesting some more German. I ended up inspired by the peace and quite and Matthias Reim's "Du und Ich". I'd made a watercolor for a friend who once asked me to do something for him. I don't think he thought that anything would come from the question. And it took a few months to be inspired to do anything for him. He is kinda a hard guy to know. But one day he did something that just about knocked me on the floor because it reminded me so much of my favorite cat, Spock. But he isn't a trekkie so forget the obvious. He is into Mayan stufff.

Again that is a surprise because he doesn't go for all that "hookey religious stuff". He is fairly straight forward and not given to flights of fantasy. But he is abso-smurfly intrigued by the Mayan Calendar and related prophecy... go figure. So I did a little research. I'd thought about doing his name in myan glyphs. Great idea but the mayans don't have letters for his name. The substitutions would have, from a design stand point been sloppy. Great. What next?

So I read about how long it tooko to decode the Mayan codex. I guess those missing letters made things a bit complicated. The linguists weren't invited to the first round of research so the archealolgists assigned literal translations for some of the kings. One poor sap in particular got a bad name. Bad as in it made him look as ineffectual and foppish as a french dandy on the throne when everything about his rule was anything but foppish. A smoking ember and a stylized frog to represent his name in a cartouche got him called "The Smoking Frog". Like I said, poor sap.

But it all coalesced for me in one of those "Duh" moments. My friend reminds me of a cat ready to pounce despite the very laid back posture. He so closely associates himself with his bad habit that the name just got in my head and stuck... The Smoking Jaguar.

Yes he liked it.

And I needed one for me because he is going to leave.

I know. Not cool. But people these days have to do what it takes to survive in this economy and if that means leaving for better work I guess I can't stop him.

I get my computer back tomorrow so I can do a download soon and show you my copy.

No comments:

Visitors Count

About Me

A Geek from way back before Geek was cool. Currently exploring my German heritage and culture through food and music; heading into my 8th year with my employer and the second year in a row with a promotion; redefining me....